Turning out the lights on daylight saving time

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FILE – In this Oct. 30, 2008, file photo, Electric Time Company employee Dan Lamoore adjusts the color on a 67-inch square LED color-changing clock at the plant in Medfield, Mass. As most U.S. residents prepare to “fall back,” a special Massachusetts commission, examining the possibility of year-round daylight savings time, plans to release its final recommendations. But it’s unlikely the state would shift from the Eastern to the Atlantic Time Zone anytime soon — if at all. Daylight Savings Time ends Sunday, Nov. 5, 2017, at 2 a.m. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola, File)

We have many things much more frightening than fear itself to fear, scarier than anything seen on Halloween, more chilling even than opening our DWP or Southern California Edison bills. Yes, Tuesday is Election Day, and some of these people are actually going to win!

Just try and sleep with the lights off.

It’s not that this year’s candidates and issues are any more horrific than candidates and issues in the past. Rather this year’s test-marketed issues are fear-mongered to the masses in TV commercials making one apocalyptic claim after another. The closer to Nov. 6 we get, the more hyperbolic the claims. If we vote for candidate X or Proposition Y we will literally be sentencing our fellow Californians to death! How could you be so cruel?

If we vote to repeal the 40 percent hike in California’s gas tax jammed through the Legislature last year with a billion dollars of pork-barrel lubricant, bridges will tumble from under our adorable, well-mannered and photogenic children’s school buses, our grandmothers will plunge their 1988 Oldsmobiles through flimsy guardrails into drainage ditches and we can kiss her addictive oatmeal cookies goodbye forever because she never got around to passing on her recipe. I hope you’re happy with yourself.

If we don’t vote to take the handcuffs off local government’s ability to impose rent control, our bachelor Uncle Carls will end up squatting in the tool shed behind a hardware store, or worse, on your sofa. Apparently, no matter which way we vote on Prop. 8, dialysis patients are toast.

A no vote on Prop. 11 means private ambulance drivers will continue to blow the foam off their pumpkin spice lattes rather than respond to my inevitable heart attack because they’re still on their lunch breaks. If Los Angeles County homeowners reject Measure W, the garbage everyone throws into storm drains will poison the fish and then the fish will poison us, and frankly, we’ll deserve to be poisoned for wondering why only homeowners should pick up the tab for cleaner oceans.

Who knew going to the polls on Election Day was fraught with such life-and-death drama?

Even something as benign as doing away with the nettlesome task of springing ahead and falling back twice a year with daylight saving time is a matter of life or death.

Proposition 7 would end the First World problem of climbing on a step stool to move the hands of that clock we foolishly hung above the kitchen sink forward or back. Then there’s the hour and a half we waste thumbing through the owner’s manual of that sexy Italian import your second trophy wife wanted because you have no idea how to change the digital clock without losing all her preset radio stations. By all means get rid of daylight saving. Proponents of Prop. 7 claim eliminating this biannual irritation will save $434 million in energy costs, money that could be put to better uses like buying a seat cushion for Jerry Brown’s insane train to nowhere or maybe paying off a few sexual harassment claims filed against members of the California Legislature.

The no on 7 people — and that appears to be a single person, UC Berkeley professor, Severin Borenstein — point out there will still be only 10 hours of daylight in winter no matter what we do with the clocks, meaning millions of school children will have to wait for the bus in the dark. And you know what happens in the dark.

But the Yes on 7 people cite even more dire consequences if we fail to do away with the biannual clock shift: massive death! Apparently, the risk of heart attacks goes up 10 percent in the first two days after the time change, stroke risk skyrockets 8 percent and for cancer patients, the stroke risk goes up 25 percent! Anyone over the age of 65 risks a 20 percent greater chance of a stroke because of disrupted sleep patterns.

If losing one hour of sleep once a year is this dangerous, the Dodgers and Red Sox should be sent to jail for life for keeping us up for 18 innings in Game 3.

Does any of this ring true?

Will rolling back the gas tax to what it was a year ago really be a threat to public safety? If keeping the filth of storm drain runoff out of the ocean is such a social benefit, and it is, then why are homeowners the only ones on the hook for it? If losing one hour of sleep once a year because of the clocks springing ahead leads to

heart attacks, strokes and traffic accidents, how come we can stay up all night binge-watching “Game of Thrones” and survive to post about it?

There are plenty of real worries in this world without the cynical and ludicrous hyperbole of fear-based campaign commercials mostly designed to fire up the base and increase voter turnout. But fear sells. Like those irritating robocalls from scammers, if it didn’t work, they wouldn’t do it.

Doug McIntyre is host of "McIntyre in the Morning" on 790 KABC in Los Angeles, heard weekdays from 5-10 a.m. He also hosted "Red Eye Radio" both locally and nationally and has been talking into a microphone for 20 years. He writes a weekly column for the Southern California News Group.